Friday, June 26, 2026

What the FIFA World Cup Means for East African Fintech and Digital Payments

Every FIFA World Cup creates economic winners far beyond the teams that make it onto the pitch.

Broadcasters see subscription spikes. Betting platforms experience surges in activity. Restaurants and sports bars fill up for late-night matches. Millions of small transactions suddenly cluster around the same event.

East Africa offers an interesting case study this year. No country from the region qualified for the 2026 tournament, yet the region's fintech and payments infrastructure will remain involved in everything happening around it.

The more interesting question isn't who wins the World Cup. It's what a month of concentrated spending reveals about the digital payment systems that increasingly power everyday commerce across East Africa.

Why Global Sporting Events Matter to Fintech

A World Cup doesn't just change what people watch. It changes how and when they spend.

Viewing parties mean more spending at bars and restaurants. Betting markets see predictable surges in activity. Streaming and pay-TV providers gain new subscribers and renewals timed around kickoff. Across East Africa, much of that spending now flows through mobile money rather than cash.

That matters because it transforms entertainment spending into digital transaction volume.

A tournament of this scale effectively becomes a live test of payment infrastructure. When millions of people are topping up betting wallets, paying subscription fees, ordering food, or settling transport fares around the same matches, the systems underneath those transactions are pushed much harder than they are during normal periods.

Where the Money Moves

Merchant Payments

The most visible impact of the World Cup may also be the least discussed from a fintech perspective.

Sports bars, restaurants, hotels, and roadside viewing centres across Nairobi, Kampala, Dar es Salaam, and Kigali typically see increased activity around major tournaments. Because mobile money has become the default payment method for much of this spending, a large share of that activity flows directly through digital payment rails.

The timing of this year's tournament adds another layer. With matches being played across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, many kickoffs fall late at night or in the early hours of the morning for East African audiences.

That shifts spending patterns toward late-night viewing parties, food purchases, transport fares, and other forms of commerce that increasingly depend on digital payments rather than cash.

Streaming and Pay-TV

The World Cup is also a subscription event.

Millions of viewers who might not normally pay for premium sports content often activate or upgrade services during major tournaments. Whether through pay-TV packages or streaming platforms, those payments increasingly happen through mobile wallets and digital payment systems.

The broadcasters may differ by market, but the underlying pattern remains the same: major sporting events generate concentrated bursts of recurring digital payments, providing another source of transaction volume for the financial infrastructure supporting them.

Sports Betting

Few sectors demonstrate the relationship between football and digital payments more clearly than sports betting.

The growth of online betting in East Africa has been closely linked to the rise of mobile money, which removed the need for physical betting shops and made deposits and withdrawals almost instantaneous.

That relationship becomes especially visible during major tournaments. Every deposit, wager, and withdrawal relies on the same payment rails supporting other parts of the economy.

The fintech story is not necessarily about which betting company gains the most customers. It is about the infrastructure underneath the industry. A World Cup played over more than a month creates sustained pressure on payment systems, making it one of the clearest tests of their reliability and scale.

Remittances

Remittances are another area worth watching.

Kenya receives roughly $5 billion annually from its diaspora, with the United States accounting for more than half of those inflows. While there is no published evidence yet linking the 2026 World Cup to higher remittance volumes, global events that attract significant diaspora attention often increase financial activity between migrants and families back home.

Whether that effect proves measurable this year remains to be seen, but it highlights another way global events can intersect with regional payment systems.

What the Tournament Reveals About East African Fintech

Step back from the football and a broader pattern emerges.

East African fintech increasingly functions as infrastructure rather than a standalone industry category. Whether someone is paying for a subscription, topping up a betting wallet, settling a restaurant bill, or paying for transport after a match, the transaction often moves through the same underlying digital payment systems.

Major events like the World Cup act as stress tests.

Normal daily transaction patterns rarely push payment infrastructure to its limits. A globally synchronised event with predictable demand spikes does. How well mobile money platforms and the services built on top of them perform during these periods offers a useful indication of how mature the region's financial infrastructure has become.

It also highlights how completely digital payments have become embedded in everyday life. A decade ago, much of this spending would have happened in cash. Today, a significant share is captured digitally, creating transaction records that increasingly influence everything from merchant analytics to alternative credit models.

Where the Infrastructure Still Faces Limits

The growth of digital payments has not eliminated every friction point.

Major sporting tournaments remain fertile ground for fraud. Fake betting tips, phishing campaigns disguised as streaming offers, and scam promotions designed to exploit heightened consumer activity tend to increase during these periods.

System reliability is another challenge. Payment platforms occasionally experience delays or downtime during periods of unusually high transaction volume, particularly when large numbers of users are attempting to transact simultaneously.

Cross-border payments also remain more complicated than they should be. A Kenyan and a Ugandan watching the same match can each spend digitally within their own markets with relative ease, yet moving money directly between mobile wallets across borders is often less seamless.

The technology largely exists. Regulatory and interoperability challenges remain the bigger obstacle.

The Bigger Story

The World Cup may be remembered for goals, upsets, and trophy lifts. For East Africa's fintech ecosystem, however, it also serves as a reminder of how deeply digital payments have become embedded in everyday life.

No East African team is competing this year. Yet every subscription payment, betting deposit, restaurant bill, and late-night boda ride tied to the tournament still runs through the region's financial infrastructure.

Beyond supporting world renowned players and teams, this is also football: a month-long demonstration of how mobile money and digital payments have evolved from financial products into essential infrastructure for the wider economy.



Thursday, June 25, 2026

Beyond Send-and-Receive: How Embedded Finance Is Reshaping East African Fintech

For most of the last two decades, East African fintech has been focused on one challenge: moving money digitally without a bank branch involved.

Mobile money solved that problem. Across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda, digital payments are now part of everyday life, while governments have digitised everything from tax collection to public services through platforms like Kenya's eCitizen and Rwanda's Irembo.

The more interesting question today is what gets built on top of that infrastructure.

That is where embedded finance comes in, and why it may be one of the most important shifts happening in East African fintech right now, even though it receives far less attention than the original mobile money boom.

The Shift From Payments to Embedded Services

Embedded finance refers to financial services such as payments, credit, and insurance being delivered inside a product whose primary purpose has nothing to do with finance.

The distinction matters.

A standalone banking or wallet app asks users to come specifically because they want to perform a financial transaction. Embedded finance works differently. It meets users where they already are, inside a ride-hailing app, a device retailer, a farm-input platform, or an e-commerce marketplace, and introduces financial services within an activity they were already carrying out.

The practical effect is that the financial product fades into the background.

You're not applying for credit. You're buying a phone and paying for it over time. You're not taking out insurance. You're signing up for a service that happens to include it.

East Africa's Clearest Example

If you want to see embedded finance working at scale in this region, M-KOPA is the case to study.

The Nairobi-based company finances smartphones, and increasingly electric motorbikes, through small daily or weekly repayments made via mobile money. Customers do not need collateral, a guarantor, or proof of income. The device itself serves as security: fall behind on payments and it locks remotely; catch up and it unlocks.

The scale is no longer a pilot-stage story.

M-KOPA today:

  • Nearly 10 million customers served across Africa

  • More than $2 billion in credit disbursed

  • KES 207 billion unlocked for customers in Kenya

  • 4.8 million Kenyan customers reached

  • Nearly four in ten customers received their first formal loan through the platform

  • More than two-thirds received their first insurance cover through bundled products

This model works particularly well in East Africa because two conditions already exist. Formal credit remains limited, while mobile money is deeply embedded in everyday financial behaviour.

The World Bank estimates that only about a quarter of adults in low-income countries use formal credit at all. At the same time, mobile money usage is frequent enough that repayments can happen quietly in the background of a person's existing financial habits.

M-KOPA's own explanation is straightforward: each repayment becomes a data point, and enough data points become a credit history, built without a bank statement.

Where Else It's Showing Up

M-KOPA may be the most visible example, but the pattern is spreading across multiple sectors.

E-commerce and ride-hailing

Platforms are embedding wallets and buy-now-pay-later products directly into checkout experiences, allowing customers to finance purchases without leaving the app to engage with a separate lender.

Mobility fintech

Vehicle financing is increasingly being integrated into ride-hailing and delivery platforms, helping drivers access cars and motorbikes through the same applications that generate their income.

Agritech

Agricultural platforms are beginning to bundle insurance and credit into farm-input and market-access services, rather than requiring farmers to seek out separate financial providers.

Open banking

Much of this growth depends on the infrastructure beneath it.

Kenyan institutions including Equity Bank, KCB, and Co-operative Bank have expanded their API offerings, making embedded financial products easier to integrate and scale.

Kenya's central bank published a draft open banking framework in March 2024, with full compliance expected by the end of 2026. The framework formalises a level of bank-to-fintech data sharing that had, in practice, already been taking shape for years as mobile money normalised digital financial interactions across the country.

Why Investors Are Paying Attention

"Many investors are now seeing SME digitisation as the next major fintech opportunity in East Africa," says Joe Kiragu, Sybrin's Regional Director for East Africa.

"If you want to evaluate how an economy is growing, look at the SME sector and the middle class."

His observation helps explain why embedded finance, rather than another standalone payments app, is attracting increasing attention across the region.

Mobile money largely solved consumer payments. The remaining opportunities sit around the edges of that success: working capital for small businesses, asset financing for informal workers, insurance for first-time policyholders, and other financial services that remain inaccessible to large parts of the population.

The Rise of Alternative Data

Another factor making embedded finance possible is the way creditworthiness is being assessed.

Alternative data, including transaction histories, utility payments, and repayment behaviour, is increasingly standing in for the credit bureau records that much of the region's population simply does not have.

This is more than a technical adjustment.

It is the mechanism that allows financial products to be embedded into phone retailers, ride-hailing platforms, and other non-financial services. The platform itself becomes the source of the data used to make lending decisions.

Without that shift, many embedded finance models would struggle to function at scale.

Where the Model Still Faces Limits

The growth of embedded finance is not without challenges.

Interoperability remains a significant constraint. A financing or insurance product embedded within one platform does not necessarily move with a customer who switches to a competing service. Even when unintended, this can create forms of soft lock-in that limit consumer flexibility.

Regulation is also still catching up.

Kenya's open banking framework illustrates this dynamic. The country has spent years operating with varying degrees of data sharing between banks, telcos, and fintechs. Only now is a formal regulatory framework being developed to govern practices that have already become common in the market.

As Kiragu puts it, the region's payments layer is mature, but "the next level is moving from access to quality and embedded services."

That observation captures the current state of East African fintech well. Access is no longer the primary challenge. The focus is increasingly shifting toward the quality, depth, and usefulness of the services built on top of existing payment infrastructure.

Beyond Payments

It makes sense that embedded finance receives less attention than mobile money did.

There is no equivalent of a single breakthrough product in the way M-Pesa transformed digital payments. Instead, the shift is happening across dozens of platforms that are not primarily financial companies at all.

Yet that may be precisely why it matters.

Mobile money answered the question of whether East Africans could move money digitally. Embedded finance is beginning to answer a different question: who gets access to credit, insurance, and working capital, and under what conditions?

Increasingly, those decisions are not being made inside a bank branch. They are being made inside the apps people already use to work, shop, travel, and run their businesses.

The next phase of fintech growth in East Africa may not be defined by new payment rails, but by the financial services quietly built on top of the ones that already exist.

Wednesday, June 24, 2026

How M-Pesa Became the Backbone of Kenya’s Digital Economy


A single interaction in Nairobi can tell you everything you need to know about how money moves in Kenya.

A matatu conductor doesn’t ask if you have cash. He doesn’t even slow down the transaction. He simply says “M-Pesa,” types a number into his phone, and moves on to the next passenger while you finish calculating your fare. That small exchange carries shows what happens when a mobile money system stops being an option and becomes the default way people transact.


Nineteen years after its launch, M-Pesa has gone far beyond its original purpose of helping unbanked Kenyans send money. It now sits underneath a large share of daily economic activity in the country, shaping how people pay, save, borrow, and even prove their creditworthiness.


For anyone building fintech products in Africa, it also raises a useful question: what does real scale actually look like when a financial product becomes part of everyday life?

From a Simple Transfer Tool to National Financial Infrastructure

When Safaricom launched M-Pesa in 2007, the goal was narrow. Many Kenyans did not have bank accounts, but mobile phone usage was already widespread. The idea was to let people send money through basic phones using airtime-like transfers.


At the time, fewer than 30% of Kenyan adults had access to formal banking services. That gap between mobile penetration and financial access became the opening M-Pesa was built on.


The adoption that followed was gradual at first, then compounding.


By 2024, financial inclusion in Kenya had risen to 84.8%. M-Pesa now serves over 40 million monthly active users in Kenya and more than 70 million customers across markets including Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Lesotho, Ghana, and Egypt.


The scale shows up most clearly in daily usage patterns:


  • Around 2,600 transactions are processed every second in Kenya

  • In the financial year ending March 2025, M-Pesa moved about Sh38.3 trillion in transaction value

  • It now contributes roughly 41.5% of Safaricom’s total revenue


What started as a money transfer service has effectively become a core layer of economic infrastructure.

The System Behind the System

The agent network

The part of M-Pesa most people interact with is digital, accessed through the phone. The part that keeps it running is physical.


Across Kenya, there are about 298,900 M-Pesa agents. These agents sit in kiosks, shops, markets, and rural trading centers. They allow users to deposit and withdraw cash instantly, bridging the gap between digital balances and physical currency.


This structure matters because it solves a problem many digital-only fintechs struggle with: cash is still deeply embedded in everyday African commerce. Without a physical conversion layer, adoption would likely have been far more limited outside urban centres.

Merchants and Everyday Commerce

M-Pesa also became embedded in business transactions much earlier than many other mobile money systems.


Today, around 633,000 businesses accept payments through Lipa Na M-Pesa. Alongside them are hundreds of thousands of micro-merchants using Pochi La Biashara, including motorcycle taxi operators, food vendors, and small kiosks.


For many of these businesses, M-Pesa functions as:

  • A payment system

  • A record of daily sales

  • A substitute for formal bookkeeping


Over time, that transaction history has taken on a second life. Lenders and fintech companies increasingly rely on it as a proxy for income verification and credit assessment. In many cases, consistent M-Pesa activity is more useful than traditional bank statements, especially for informal businesses that never had access to them in the first place.

How M-Pesa Expanded Beyond Payments

Once payments became routine, Safaricom began layering additional financial services on top of the same infrastructure.


The pattern is consistent: instead of building separate systems, new products plug directly into the M-Pesa wallet and its transaction history.

Ziidi and Retail Investing

One of the clearest examples is Ziidi, a money market fund integrated into M-Pesa and developed with partners including the Nairobi Securities Exchange and Kestrel Capital.


It lowered the entry barrier for investing dramatically, allowing users to start with as little as KES 100.


The growth has been striking:

  • About 130,000 users in September 2024

  • Around 4.3 million users by March 2026


To put that in context, traditional collective investment schemes in Kenya serve roughly 300,000 people in total. Ziidi alone has surpassed that entire base.


Credit Built on Transaction History

Credit has followed a similar path.


Products such as Fuliza Biashara and the Taasi loans (Taasi Till and Taasi Pochi) are designed for small merchants who already use M-Pesa daily but lack formal credit histories.


Instead of relying on collateral or traditional credit scores, lending decisions are increasingly influenced by:

  • Transaction frequency

  • Cash flow consistency

  • Wallet activity patterns


This shift has quietly changed what “creditworthiness” looks like for a large segment of small businesses.

Cross-border and Global Payments

More recently, M-Pesa has begun extending beyond domestic transactions.


A virtual Visa card linked directly to the wallet now allows users to pay for global services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Apple. This removes the need for a separate bank-issued international card and brings global payments closer to the same interface people already use for local commerce.


Why This Matters Beyond Kenya

The trajectory M-Pesa has followed is increasingly relevant across Africa.

According to GSMA, the continent now has over 500 million active mobile money accounts processing more than $830 billion annually. At the same time, fintech revenue across Africa is projected by Boston Consulting Group to grow from around $10 billion today to over $65 billion by 2030.


But the growth opportunity is shifting.


Payments are already widely adopted. The larger gaps remain in:

  • Access to credit (with over half of African adults still underserved)

  • SME financing (with an estimated $330 billion funding gap)

  • Savings and investment access for low-income users


This is where the next phase of mobile money expansion is heading: financial products built directly on top of payment systems that already reach mass adoption.

The Prevalent Gap

Even with its success, M-Pesa highlights some of the structural limits of Africa’s financial systems. The biggest challenge is interoperability.


A user in Kenya cannot seamlessly send money to a mobile money user in Tanzania, even though both operate within the East African Community. Different operators, regulations, and settlement systems still create fragmentation.


Regional efforts like the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) and broader integration under the African Continental Free Trade Area are attempting to reduce this friction.


In many ways, the constraint is no longer technological. It is regulatory and institutional.

In SummarY

M-Pesa’s evolution offers a clear pattern: a system designed for basic money transfers can gradually become the backbone of an entire financial ecosystem when three things align: distribution, trust, and repetition.


What began as a way to move money without a bank account now sits at the centre of payments, lending, savings, and even cross-border commerce in Kenya.


The most interesting part is not the scale itself, but how it was achieved. There was no sudden leap. It was built through agent networks in kiosks, small transaction fees, and low entry thresholds that made participation effortless.


For the rest of Africa’s fintech ecosystem, M-Pesa serves as both reference point and warning. The next wave of growth is unlikely to come from payments alone, but from what gets built on top of them once they become invisible.






Tuesday, August 27, 2024

How to Start A Career in Tech in Kenya

 How to Start A Career in Tech in Kenya



East Africa, and Africa as a continent is undergoing a series of revolutions that leave much to be anticipated about in its future development. The technology scene in Kenya is one of these hot spots of activities and innovations. Tagged as the “Silicon Savannah”, Kenya has been recorded as one of the African countries home to some of the best cutting-edge technologies on the continent. 

This intense spring of ideas and innovations has led many to consider breaking into the tech industry and technology as a discipline. However, just like every other field of expertise, the tech industry is not one to venture into without counting the costs. This article helps you gain insight into what to do and what to avoid in your quest to break into the technology hub in Kenya.


1. Identify the numerous aspects of the tech industry and decide on where you will focus on.

Just like in the Sciences or Arts, there are numerous specialties in the tech space that require careful study and appraisal of each one to know what fits best for an individual. Specialties like Software Development, Data Analytics, Cyber security, and Artificial Intelligence have taken precedence in the past years in Kenya. But, specialties like Health Tech, UI/UX, Game Development and Design, and Product Management are areas yet to be mined to their fullest capacity. To fully understand what size fits you, you must carefully explore what interests you or what you do best. This way, you will be in a better state to pick out your specialty of interest without pressure.


2. Attend professional training tailored to your specialty of interest

The introduction of technology has made the world a global village and quality education on any subject matter can be accessed from any part of the world.

To build a successful tech career in Kenya, you should take care of making the mistake of being a generalist with no deep expertise in any aspect of technology. This can be carried out by registering for conferences, attending seminars, and taking courses relating to your field of interest.

Not only will doing this open you up to the recent trends and Kenyan government policies regarding the tech space, but it will also create an avenue to network and build working relationships with people who are from the same field.


3. Explore local opportunities first

Although the influx of foreign intervention in the technology scene in Kenya might serve as a source of temptation to look out for foreign opportunities only, it is beneficial to also step back and look into opportunities made available locally. One of the resources to access to help with this is the innovation iHub in Kenya which has helped to connect many Kenyan tech enthusiasts with appropriate opportunities. 

Getting actively engaged in the activities of communities such as these will help you understand the local tech market in Kenya and how to maneuver your way successfully. After successfully gaining a firm stand in the local tech scene, then you can begin to consider spreading your reach and attempt to break into the technology industry in any other country, either in Africa or overseas.


4. Have an excellent job search strategy

One of the major milestones anyone successful in the tech scene has recorded is having a well-crafted job search strategy. This will involve starting from the lowest hierarchy for most or learning on the go for others. Both of these strategies require an iota of deliberateness and intensity for a tech enthusiast in Kenya. This is because the efflux and influx of different technology companies into the country might seem tempting enough to enable one hop from one employment to another - which is a vital sign of instability. To gain a strong foothold in the tech industry in East Africa and Kenya, you must ensure to be single-minded, strategic, and firm on what you want and how you will get it. This attitude will help you create a beautiful curriculum vitae when you step out in search of a position.

In your quest for an opening in the technology industry, your job search strategy should also include having spontaneous answers, ideas, and innovations that will help improve the future of tech in Kenya and in Africa as a whole.


The tech space in Kenya is one where you get to build your grit, resilience, and attention for excellence. Having the big break will most likely not happen overnight, however, by staying through with the decision you make from the start, you can become one of the many wonders of technology Kenya has ever produced. Kenya is increasingly becoming an attractive source of technological innovations and its impact on the economic environment in East Africa should not be overlooked.


References

1. Resilient Digital Africa, 26 March 2024, https://resilient.digital-africa.co/en/blog/2024/03/26/kenya-emerges-as-africas-premier-technology-market/

2. iHub Africa, https://ihub.co.ke/


Saturday, March 16, 2024

Damaged Undersea Cable Disrupts Internet Connectivity Across Africa: Houthi Involvement Suspected


In a significant development impacting digital communication across Africa, a damaged undersea cable has led to widespread loss of internet connectivity in various regions. The affected cable, belonging to SEACOM, a prominent provider of connectivity to businesses and companies in Africa, has resulted in disruptions that are particularly affecting Nigerian businesses.

The cause of the damage to the undersea cable remains under investigation, with multiple factors being considered. One potential cause suggested by Israeli media outlets is the involvement of Houthi forces, who have been targeting cargo ships in the region as part of their support for Hamas during the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The Houthis, an armed political and religious group in Yemen, have recently been engaged in aggressive actions in the Red Sea, including the hijacking of a commercial ship and launching missile and drone attacks on other vessels. These activities have raised concerns about their potential involvement in damaging the undersea cables critical for internet connectivity.

Oliver Fortuin, the Group CEO of SEACOM and a former Group Enterprise officer at MTN, highlighted the extensive impact of the cable damage. He mentioned that not only SEACOM's cable but also cables operated by other telecom operators like TGN, Europe-one, and Europe India Gateway were affected.

The Europe India Gateway cable, in particular, connects several countries across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, highlighting the broader ramifications of the connectivity disruption. Tata Communications, operator of the TGN cable, confirmed service disruptions due to cable damage near Yemen, affecting connectivity in various regions.

Repair efforts are underway, with SEACOM and its repair partner E-marine awaiting permits to commence repairs in the Red Sea. However, the geopolitical complexities of the situation,  are expected to delay the repair process significantly.

Countries primarily affected by the internet connectivity disruptions include those in East Asia, Egypt, and Kenya. The extent of the impact on these regions underscores the critical importance of undersea cables in maintaining global digital connectivity and the challenges posed by geopolitical tensions in safeguarding these vital communication channels.

Disclaimer: This news release is based on available information and ongoing investigations. Details may be subject to change as new information becomes available.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

2024 TECH CONFERENCES TO LOOK OUT FOR IN EAST AFRICA


In this technological era, what better way to grow, network, and stay informed than attending tech conferences? Here in this write-up are some conferences in East Africa to organise in your yearly conference schedule. 

Connected Banking East Africa

Topping your finance A-game and confidently navigating this complex financial landscape, you should not miss the 11th Edition of the summit in conjunction with Innovation & Excellence Awards – East Africa holding in Nairobi, Kenya. This summit, focusing on crafting the Future of Banking with Inclusion & Digital Evolution is set to showcase notable experienced industry personnels interested in the finance industry's newest trends and technologies. Over 20 sessions anchored by about 35 speakers telling individualized success stories will provide practical insights and networking opportunities to share ideas and best practices on digital banking solutions.


Location: Radisson Blu Hotel, Nairobi Upper Hill, Nairobi, Kenya.

Date: 6th March, 2024.

MWC Kigali

Previous themes at MWC Kigali have focused on FinTech, HealthTech, and developing mobile technology in Africa. At this three-in-one event featuring MWC Kigali in collaboration with Africa HealthTech Summit and Smart Africa, the opportunity for one to engage with business leaders across the globe, numerous industry stakeholders, and Africa's top government officials for collaborative purpose in business ventures contributing to the transfomation of ICT in Africa is provided. 

Location: Kigali Convention Centre, Kigali, Rwanda.

Date: 29 - 31 October, 2024.

Microfinance Tech Summit (MTS 2024)

The 2024 Kigali MTS is the 2nd of its kind aiming in housing over 500 delegates from various digital works of life such as microfinance institutions, technology experts, policymakers, regulators, and other stakeholders to rub minds on digitization in microfinance for improved customer experience. The summit addresses integrating technology in microfinance, user data protection, partnerships, and investments in technology-led initiatives.

Location: Kigali Convention Centre, Kigali, Rwanda.

Date: 23 - 24 May 2024.

FinTech Festival Tanzania

This event for Financial Technology in East Africa offers a space for the FinTech community to interact and work on innovative ideas, from several conferences to exhibitions and awards. The event is significant in developing the ecosystem and improving partnerships between Tanzania and global FinTech.

Location: Julius Nyerere International Convention Center (JNICC), Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Date: 28 - 29 November 2024.

Africa ICS Cybersecurity Conference and Expo 2024

To prevent impediments in the economical growth of Africa, usually caused by data breaches and cybersecurity attacks, this event aims to address Africa’s Industrial Control Systems security. This Nairobi conference is intended to call attention to lectures on the trendiest areas in the Africa ICS sector, the benefits of SCADA security systems, challenges, and insights at the Africa ICS Business meeting, the Africa Women in Cyber Security Forum, and more. 

Location:  Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), Nairobi City

Date: 11th - 13th June, 2024.

The ICT Expo 2024 Africa

With topics spanning IoT, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Telecoms, E-commerce, and others, the expo plans to pitch the digital divide within Africa. The event proposes to communicate strategies and investments enabling the availability of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in rural and remote communities.

Location: Sarit Expo Centre, Nairobi, Kenya.

Date: April 25th - 26th, 2024



Attending any of these tech events across East Africa will provide a valuable experience in exchange for your time. At these conferences, you'll have the opportunity to connect with fellow professionals and industry leaders, stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends, and acquire new skills and knowledge.


What the FIFA World Cup Means for East African Fintech and Digital Payments

Every FIFA World Cup creates economic winners far beyond the teams that make it onto the pitch. Broadcasters see subscription spikes. Bettin...